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The Return of Alex Mardell
November 7, 2007

Alex Mardell, TSC co-owner/writer, experienced some tough luck after his World Powerlifting Championship in Söelden, Austria. He had a mediocre performance, placing 12th in the SHW (Super heavyweight, 125+ kg) weight class. However, he still placed 5th in the bench. After the competition was over, he was looking forward to spending a week with his good friend, Kai Nome, in Europe, going any which way the wind blew. Here is some of his testimony of his European vacation, in his own words:

My Experience in a German Hospital

Well on this trip I have certainly had some great experiences and some not so good ones as they kind of started in Prague. On Wednesday, I bit my tongue when I was asleep and woke up a few hours later with the biggest, swollen tongue ever. I could barely keep it in my mouth and eating was a serious problem as well. But after a few hours I kept noticing it getting better and was back to normal by supper time and after this bizarre episode never really thought anything of it until now.

On Saturday October 27, I woke up with a sore cheek and again I bit it when I was sleeping. I took some meat out of my cheek but it all seemed to be fine- or so I thought. The real pressing issue was the extreme pain of my feet. They were swollen big time and I could barely walk around. I thought it was due to my shoes because my feet were in them a very long time. I never took them off during the train ride from Prague to Frankfurt, which took about 12 hours with train delays. When I got to Frankfurt my feet were achy and swollen but so were Kai's and just dismissed it on the long travelling day. But the next day (Friday, October 26) I could barely make it out of bed in the morning to take my routine leak. I could barely wiggle my toes and they were puffy and red and they itched like crazy. I soaked them in the shower with cool water and then checked out the internet on things I could do to help the swelling. The net told me the feet are the most abused body part and it is normal to carry some retention in them due to diet, not drinking enough water - as it was much cheaper to drink beer everywhere in Germany. So after the breakfast in our hotel I elevated my feet above my heart and slept for another 2 hours. The swelling in my feet were better and Kai and I ate a German Donair later and chugged 1.5 litres of water down the hatch. I thought I was too young to have gout especially in both feet but as I knew of gout due to my article that I wrote on gout on The Strength Center a few months ago I knew it wasn't it as my big toe did not look like Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer. (Guilty as charged with a shameless plug on the website yet again).

Now back to my tongue as I noticed it was starting to swell a bit as I was almost impressed how hard I must have bit it in my sleep and not even awoke. I finally found an ice machine in the closed for the winter season ice cream shop and chomped on some ice. Everything seemed to be going well and Kai and I were off to do this tourist tour and take a boat ride down the Rhine, have supper and have this wine tasting event. This turned out to be a lot of fun as everybody on the tour were American and gave us 2 Canucks a tough time because we were the only two Canadians and about 20 years younger than everyone else.

As we were on the boat ride I noticed my bottom lip was bothering me and the sucker was gradually blowing up. Kai and I were laughing pretty hard as we thought it was kind of funny it was acting like that. So later after the restaurant I asked for a huge glass of ice and began icing more of poor mouth as the evening progressed though I could feel my lips getting bigger and bigger instantly. I didn't even clue in yet why the swelling in my lips were not even going down yet despite the 1.5 hours of icing did nothing. And then Kai mentioned my feet, and my tongue and told me that there was probably some sort of infection in my body!

By the wine tasting I looked hideous and everybody was looking at the new Donald Duck lips I am now sporting out. It was embarrassing more than anything walking around and getting the strangest looks from neighbouring guided tours. I was thinking about deformed people in the world and how their day to day life experiences must feel similar to a small degree to what I was going through. One of the American's I talked to was a huge man, who dwarfed Kai who is about 6' 4.5" and weighs 255 lbs and he played NCAA Football for the Michigan State Wolverines back in the 70's looked at me and said man "still working on it hey?" and then proceeded to tell me about on of his friends who had some sort of accident as I wasn't paying to much attention to it as the tide of the story did not seem to have a good one... and on of his finger's began to swell up and infected his whole hand which turned black and he still has to get it drained more than 6 months later. As soon as I heard that I tried to remain positive and not worry about my own fate.

The bus ride from the restaurant near the Rhine of course took forever coming back to our hotel as it had to first drop everyone else off at their wicked-awesome hotels. Rich Americans hey! And my speech was hard to make out as the swelling in my lips were now in my cheeks. I was starting to get a little closterphobic and tried to remain calm but realized I wasn't going to wait to the morning to get this looked at and Kai and I were going to get try and see a doctor or get some drugs from a pharmacy. And again of course our hotel was the last stop and I had to get to the hospital as our tour guide, Inga was shocked at the sight of my face. We got a cab and went to the University Hospital-luckily our cab driver couldn't speak a word of English but managed to know by looking at me where we needed to go. So he was going to take Kai and me to the dentist and after frustratingly talking to him he wound up taking us to the entrance of the Hospital thanks in part to the parking ticket monitor he knew what we wanted as he spoke some English.

In the hospital we walked right in the main lobby of what I presumed was Emerg. and no one was there waiting in line ahead of us and the time neared 10 pm. But the front receptionist nurse did not know any English and it was hard to explain to her what exactly I needed. By there account her and this other man nurse thought I fell down the stairs or something. Quite humorous now but at the time it wasn't as the game of charades that we seemed to be playing with healthcare professionals was getting us nowhere. But after showing them my swollen feet and indicating my hands were starting to become infected she pointed us downstairs.

Once we were downstairs we talked to one of the security guards who couldn't hold it in by the sight of my oversized lips and was letting out some of his laughter. After all I couldn't blame him as my appearance stated before was humorous. He led us up the elevator to this other, small section of the Emerg ward, that telling by the sign showed in German what looked like surgeries and accidents. However, no one was there and we rang the buzzer maybe a dozen times. This hospital seemed empty with no one to help us, a stark contrast to the U of A hospital back home, which seems to be fully staffed around the clock including the wee hours of the morning. We then proceeded to check all the doors and pulled this rope with a small rubber ball at the end of it and it opened up this corridor that smelt terrible. The fumes of something or someone was rotting- not a good sign. What is worse than the smell was the few nurses who were walking either side of us almost pretending we were not there instead of asking us why we were here.

Back to the old security guard downstairs who was on the phone talking to someone and got Kai to tell him my symptoms and what we needed. Kai at this point was doing most of the talking because it was hard for me to speak clearly enough to make out my English let alone a German with broken English skills at best. When I realized this process of trying to find some help was going to take longer than originally expected and when we do if I cannot even speak but just grunt or something Kai needed to know that if they give me any antibiotics that and it could make my face swell more than it already was. After the phone call another security guard came down from the elevator and led us up back to our original, small emergency section with still nobody there, he pulled the cord with the small rubber ball on the end of it and went back into the stench ridden hallway where he talked to a nurse to get some assistance for us. We were told by him afterwards to wait in the little lobby and someone would be there shortly.

About 10 minutes later a nurse who could not speak a lick of English sat down to her chair next to the buzzer and asked us what we needed. After hearing the phrase "Sprok ze Deutsch" a few times she ran out to the hallway and got co-worker to help translate us. They were trying to figure out what exactly I was ailing from and who to send me to. Well we first went to the Internal Medicine doctor back downstairs through another grimy, stinky, empty corridor and waited to talk to a Doctor. After meeting with him he diagnosed me to go see a Dermatologist Doctor in building 21. We were in building 23 and were left by ourselves to try and find it on the hospital map. On our journey outside the dimly lit University Hospital I mentioned to Kai on how they obviously don't worry about any kind of lawsuits or anything as we have been in the hospital well over an hour and haven't seen anyone to can help us just pass us along to another colleague in a different part of the Hospital maze. When we go to the hospital back home we just go and the doctor or whoever specialty it is even sometimes unbeknownst to us is there coming to us not visa versa like in Germany.

After going outside we walked to the front reception who we were first to see some 90 minutes ago. As I looked into her eyes I could tell she felt bad on not being able to find what we were looking for and being led in every which direction. So we could get re-acquainted with our baring and to find building 21. Twenty minutes later we finally stumble to the right building and remember my feet were so swollen it is hard to stand on them let alone walk. At building 21 we rang the bell we were greeted by Peter, a male nurse who was nice to us and knew why we were here as they were alerted by the Internal Medicine doctor. He sat us down into a doctor's office and were instantly greeted by a smoking Doctor-Dr. Eva, who only looked a few years my elder. Her English was surprisingly good too and man what a relief! She was really professional and she was immediately worried that the food allergy was going to spread to my throat and lungs and make it hard for me to breathe. She proceeded to check my entire body for other areas of swelling and skin irritation but besides my right foot and my hands nothing else seems to be affected. I received an I.V. drip in my arm and was told I was going to get at least 500 ml of a steroid and a anti-histamine put in my drip to help combat the swelling.

I was a little worried because of the steroid but she told me there was no choice to get it despite my claims to being a drug free athlete. But in terms of being in a real emergency something is wrong nothing matters more than being able to be reverse the inflammation and just get healthy. Well I looked over to Kai and said "Who knew I was going to get my first steroid injection in Germany" as soon as I said that she laughed and must of thought I could have been a potential previous user.

I had to stay in the hospital overnight so that Dr. Eva could check up on me 2-3 hours later to monitor my condition and see if the swelling had subsided and to get the blood results to give any clue what was going on. The swelling had gone down but was somewhat minimal and it was decided that I would stay at least till Noon the next day.

The next day around 10:30 am or so Dr. Eva wanted to admit me to find out what the cause for my condition was. She told me she was going to write me a medical letter saying I was unfit to fly back as I had a flight at 7 pm on Sunday, October 28 but it was to London and not overseas back to Canada. I exclaimed that it was a 1 hr flight to Brussels where I had a 9 hour layover and then to London which was about another 1 hour. So it wasn't that bad. She still said she was against it but could not detain me to the hospital. So she gave me a prescription to get two small liquid medicine bottles to take only for an emergency if the swelling had come back and it would essentially by me an hour's time to get to the hospital. Also she gave me 10 days worth of steroid pills to take bi-daily once in the morning and once in the evening and would tie me over until I got checked out back home to determine what the hell was going on with me. She warned me to only eat bread and have tea or potatoes and rice and see how it went from there. She really cautioned me to be responsible to what I ate and I really followed it but I was getting hungry and water and bread were not cutting it. Besides, where do I get just rice from or potatoes from?

When I landed in Brussels I was extremely hungry as it was about 8:30pm and had a very empty stomach and there was only one restaurant albeit a fast food joint that was open-Pizza Hut. I played Russian roulette and ordered a medium pizza and a large diet coke. I was a little worried and really monitored my face. I was okay and the four days that I was in England I was fine. I took my steroid pills regularly and was feeling better about everything and nothing had swollen since. Oh by the way the total cost of staying in the hospital cost me over 200 Euro and then the prescriptions cost me 80 plus Euros. I hope it is all covered by my travel insurance!

And then the first day in my bed back at home and my left bicep seems to be swelling like my lips were and my left ear seems to be getting worse too. I will keep TSC posted on what the diagnosis is.

Alex Mardell

TSC Content Director

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